Here's the thing, long ago I got two .reg files from a friend, they have to do with tcp/ip and winsock thingies (I'm awful with this kind of stuff) and when I double clicked on them the changes were all automatically applied.

But... now I'm in Windows 7 and the files refuse to work! So... is it possible to convert these two files so that they work in Windows 7 the same way the did in the past with XP?

They almost certainly aren't necessary in Windows 7/Vista, if they are what I think they are. A lot of XP's silly defaults were corrected in Vista, and I think some things aren't even possible to set anymore because some values are handled dynamically by your system.

Aw.. a pity, I asked my friend and (I'm writing now what she told me, which I don't understand) "Those were a number of measures that reinforced the tcp/ip and winsock protocols for increased security against DoS (?) and DDoS (?) attacks".

So that's what they were for! Unfortunately she had no idea on if they worked or not in Windows 7 so, meh!

Aw.. a pity, I asked my friend and (I'm writing now what she told me, which I don't understand) "Those were a number of measures that reinforced the tcp/ip and winsock protocols for increased security against DoS (?) and DDoS (?) attacks".

So that's what they were for! Unfortunately she had no idea on if they worked or not in Windows 7 so, meh!

*blinks*

No, they weren't.

Some people passed around RWIN (receive window) tweaks as .reg files, and this could slightly increase your download speeds in Windows XP, however, it is not needed as of Vista (And thus 7). There were also a few other minor tweaks, but none of these were necessary as of Vista.

Attacks against the network stack itself were generally not valid after Windows 2000 came out, and a registry patch isn't going to be sufficient to take care the vulnerabilities that did exist - that took an actual firewall, or more frequently, a fix from Microsoft. And unless you are running a server of some sort, just having a router is about as good as you are generally going to get against denial-of-service attacks. If you are running a server, your best solution is an actual firewall and good server code/configuration.

Regardless, they're text files - open them up in Notepad and post them here if you want, and we can see what they are actually doing. : )

The SynAttackProtect, TcpMaxHalfOpen, and TcpMaxHalfOpenRetried registry entries are no longer used with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The TCP/IP protocol suite implementation in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 was redesigned to provide improved performance and does not require manual modification of these registry entries.

This just makes your computer more aggressively terminate connections that might be dead. 3 is okay. But again, assuming you're behind a router and you probably are, lowering this hurts you more than it helps you.

This is only relevant if you have multiple gateways configured. Turning it off as you are trying to do here would mean that if one of your networks failed, it wouldn't automatically try to switch to another. I'm not sure why disabling this explicitly is supposed to be a 'good idea'.

By default, TCP connections have a rather ridiculous time-to-live, roughly five days according to spec, or three hours by MS's default - this sets it to five minutes (300,000 milliseconds). I actually set this lower for E's server, but again, it's my server - it's directly accessible by the rest of the world and it has to be. For most people, who are behind a hardware router of some sort, this hurts more than it helps, as it may drop potentially good connections.

Only relevant if you're using WINS and NetBIOS, and running a network as such where you'd fear to be subjected to such attacks. I don't think I've seen WINS in over a decade, even in Microsoft shops. Microsoft itself suggests against this.

I'm sorry for the delayed reply but real life is keeping me too busy. Anyway, Vekseid I'm afraid that I'm barely understanding anything, it looks like it's too outdated in general? I'm using Windows 7 so as far as I understand by all that you explained... it's either fixed, outdated or irrelevant because it's done automagically in Windows 7, right? Well except for the one where you say... um... this one!

I'm sorry for the delayed reply but real life is keeping me too busy. Anyway, Vekseid I'm afraid that I'm barely understanding anything, it looks like it's too outdated in general? I'm using Windows 7 so as far as I understand by all that you explained... it's either fixed, outdated or irrelevant because it's done automagically in Windows 7, right? Well except for the one where you say... um... this one!

And that's it? Although again, I have no idea on what it really means, I'm sorry!

Do you connect with an adsl, or cable modem? Or do you connect via a dial up modem. If you connect via a modem, then this is still relevant. If you connect via the first two, then it doesn't matter :)

Usually through my phone or laptop if I'm at home but yeah, I think that it's adsl in most, if not all, cases. But thanks! I guess that I can forget about those files now, I might just keep them around for the memories anyway, you never know!